


miles to go before i sleep

by redsquadronblues (clockworkcorvids)



Series: wedgeluke shenanigans [2]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Original Trilogy
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Canon-Typical Violence, Crying, Cuddling, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Established Relationship, Force-Sensitive Wedge Antilles, Gray Force User Luke Skywalker, Gray Force User(s), Gray Jedi, Gray Jedi Luke Skywalker, How Do I Tag, Hurt/Comfort, Kinda but kinda not, M/M, Mild Gore, Monsters, Post-Star Wars: Return of the Jedi, Sort Of, The Dark Side of the Force, no beta we die like men, this is something ill probably explore in more depth later
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-30
Updated: 2019-12-30
Packaged: 2021-02-27 12:35:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,841
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22027189
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/clockworkcorvids/pseuds/redsquadronblues
Summary: Luke can’t help it, then; he sighs deeply, and leans his head on Wedge’s shoulder. In this moment, he wants nothing more than to melt into the pilot’s warmth, to any warmth at all, and fall apart into every one of his individual atoms, to return to the Force, where he’ll be safe and calm and serene and harmonious and all that. This movement is not unfamiliar, but the notions driving it are, and Wedge seems to sense this. To Luke’s surprise, he doesn’t wrap an arm around Luke’s shoulders or kiss his forehead or card a hand through his hair as he usually would, but rather pushes Luke away—gently, but a push nonetheless.
Relationships: Wedge Antilles & Luke Skywalker, Wedge Antilles/Luke Skywalker
Series: wedgeluke shenanigans [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1585483
Comments: 4
Kudos: 35





	miles to go before i sleep

**Author's Note:**

>   
> _  
> The woods are lovely, dark and deep,  
>  But I have promises to keep,   
> And miles to go before I sleep,   
> And miles to go before I sleep.  
> _  
> \- [stopping by woods on a snowy evening](https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/42891/stopping-by-woods-on-a-snowy-evening), robert frost  
> 

Luke doesn’t know why in all nine hells he listened when Leia suggested he search this nameless backwater planet for an old Jedi relic he only has one half-assed clue of the existence of, and he has no kriffing clue why he kept listening when she suggested Wedge go with him. 

_ I don’t need a pilot! _ , he had said semi-truthfully, grimacing at the way the words came across after they were out of his mouth, and had then suffered the glares of both Leia and Wedge knowing full well that he did. Sure, he can fly an X-wing, and well for that matter, but Leia’s nearly as Force-sensitive as he is, despite not being trained, and Wedge is certainly more connected to it than the average person, so. They know. He can’t fool them. 

And he also can’t fool them because Leia is, well,  _ Leia _ , and she’s his sister, and there are some things that nobody but the two of them will ever understand, and Wedge, well...they haven’t had as much time together as either of them would have liked in recent weeks, but the conversation they shared after the destruction of the Death Star wasn’t for nothing. 

The  _ kiss _ they shared wasn’t for nothing. 

And Leia had been convincing, anyways, as she tends to be: Luke is a very talented pilot, but Wedge is undeniably better, and the dark side is deeply present on this planet. Luke needs someone there for him who won’t be as susceptible to the tricks of the Force as he will, someone who can remain clear-eyed and drag him out of there if need be. 

Luke had bitten his tongue, wanting to say that he’s not going to fall into the dark, that he survived Bespin and he survived the cave on Dagobah and he’s been through so,  _ so _ much darkness he can’t even begin to articulate it but he’s always come out on the other end. What he  _ really _ wanted to say, beneath even all that, was that he doesn’t want someone,  _ especially  _ not Wedge, to get hurt because of him.

_ But you two wanted to spend time together anyways, didn’t you?  _ Leia’s expression had said, in a whisper that was somewhere between Luke simply knowing her well enough to discern what she was thinking and actual communication in the Force. 

Not like this, for the love of the Force, not when they’re both in danger and Luke is increasingly realizing just how entrenched the evil is here, in everything around him, enough that even Wedge, with only a smidgen of Force-sensitivity, can feel it too. 

Part of him wonders, as he hacks through thick, gnarled vines with his lightsaber, if it was the safest idea to bring  _ Wedge _ , of all people, along with him. Leia knows how close they are, knows how much he cares, knows that he’ll go further to protect Wedge then he would for all but a few others in the whole Galaxy.

But that feeling goes both ways. Wedge will watch out for Luke, Wedge has learned his tells over the years, Wedge knows what to watch out for even if he isn’t as intuitively in-tune with it as Leia is. And Leia is busy, so is Han, so is pretty much everyone he trusts, and he  _ promised _ Wedge that they would stay by each other’s side. He made sure he pulled the pilot aside first, looked him in the eyes and asked him if he  _ really _ wanted to do this, wasn’t just going along with it for one reason or another, so, well, there’s nothing Luke can really do except complain, and then sit there in silence thinking about how scared he is for Wedge, but how glad he is nonetheless to have the man by his side. 

And Wedge has been by his side, somehow managing to barely fall behind Luke at all this whole time, despite being weighed down by the pack slung over his shoulders and lacking the extra boost of stamina that the Force gives Luke. The jungle is dense, here, much thicker than the clearing they landed in—Luke did his best to hide the shuttle from any Force signatures or nearby radar, but he’s still struck by a slight cord of worry that the ship will be damaged or gone when they return—and the sunlight peeking through the treetops high above is beginning to lessen. Luke is getting to the point where he has to crane his neck if he wants to see where the trees end and the sky begins, and the light coming through is patchy, green-tinted and, more and more as they trudge on, dim.

They haven’t spoken much save for small talk here and there, both of them focused on the task at hand, but they’re both breathing hard despite being as in shape as they are, and the green glow of Luke’s lightsaber is starting to become more than just a way to clear the path they’re on, a path that hasn’t been trodden by any sapient being for countless cycles. The lightsaber is now a source of light that they actually need, and more than that, it’s a reminder of what they carry with them, beyond the physical.

They’re connected: to each other, to the Force, to everything. 

Unfortunately, to this planet as well, and that is a burden Luke is glad Wedge doesn’t have to share with him, because even to a non-Jedi the power of the dark side here is noticeable. To Luke, it’s all-encompassing, permeating every vine in the forest and every pore in his skin, seeping into him and, he knows, into Wedge too, although the other man surely feels it less piercingly and more as a sort of afterthought, perhaps akin to a prickling on the back of his neck.

The seeping, lurking dark has been mostly ignorable up until this point, staved off by Wedge’s presence just as much as by Luke’s inner strength and the open emptiness of the bright sky, where the Force flows freely and without the creeping, sickly corruption that they’re walking into. But it grows stronger every second, and this is how Luke knows they’re getting closer to their destination. White burns into the backs of Luke’s eyelids as he blinks hard, the glow of his lightsaber blinding as he and Wedge squeeze between some particularly threatening vines that Luke feels he would rather not attack. It almost seems as if the vines are moving, twitching, every little spore and bristle on the strange plants following his and Wedge’s movement, and he’s not sure if it’s because they’re sentient like a distressing amount of Kashyyyk’s fauna, or if they simply are embodying the darkness, brought alive by it.

He doesn’t want to dwell on this, and thankfully, not long after, he and Wedge come to a clearing. Here, there is a crack somewhere high in the treetops, still too high to clearly make out without straining either his eyes or his connection to the Force as it stills around him, creeping slower than he’s used to, something not just dark but  _ evil _ . 

A chill blows through, and Luke shivers, but Wedge doesn’t seem to notice this or the cold itself as he drops his pack unceremoniously in the dirt and flops down onto a rock.

For a moment, it’s as if the light above has disappeared, but then Luke blinks, and deactivates his lightsaber, not yet moving from where he stands, and it’s just the two of them in this little enclave of light amongst a stifling, suffocating darkness.

“The energy here is…” Wedge shudders as he trails off, searching for the right words, but Luke isn’t sure if it means he’s feeling the cold too, or if he’s just perturbed. 

“Dark,” Luke finishes, finding suddenly that his throat is dry. He misses the comfort of his lightsaber in one hand, hilt fitting perfectly into the callous it created, but he knows he can’t rely on weapons alone. 

“Not just that,” Wedge says, finally finding his voice. “Dark I know. And that’s not always a bad thing—” Luke almost laughs, imagining how some of the more, for lack of a better word,  _ pretentious  _ Jedi he’s heard of would react to Wedge’s words “—but this is.” He stops talking, stops rummaging around in his bag for a flask. Waves one hand, gesturing vaguely to everything around them.

“This is bad. It feels almost...sticky? Like we’re trapped, like everything is moving slower from some sort of injury, and the blood won’t clot right.”

A chill runs up Luke’s spine. Sometimes he forgets just how perceptive and articulate Wedge can be, despite the other man only having the slightest of Force sensitivity compared to him. For a fleeting second, he sees an alternate world, one where Anakin Skywalker never fell, one where Palpatine never took over, one where all children with even the barest glimmer of connection to the Force are taught to hone it, to connect to this beautiful thing that binds the galaxy together. Maybe they wouldn’t all become Jedi, but still—a connection to the Force, properly tempered, is a powerful thing, something to be cherished and used responsibly, and there are lessons for everyone to learn from it.

He blinks, and Wedge is gazing up at him from across the clearing.

Wedge, who is a pilot. Wedge, who is not a Jedi. Wedge, who sees things and knows things and eerily finds just the right words for them, and sometimes the right pictures too (he draws, almost always carries a little sketchbook with him, and he’s only recently begun to actually let anyone look at the landscapes and ships and people and planets captured within its pages). 

Wedge, who he loves. Who he is  _ in love with _ . There’s a difference somewhere there, some nuance, but what Luke feels for him is more all-encompassing even than the slowly festering thing that infects this forest.

Perhaps that is why Leia insisted he accompany Luke. She knows this too.

Luke wonders if what he saw was a product of the evil here, already infesting his mind even though he has yet to reach its source, where the artifact he came for lies, or if he’s simply deluding himself. Most likely, he decides, his connection to the Force is being pried open just like this planet’s was, poked at like an open wound, slowly infected in a way that, at first, seems to be bolstering his power rather than infecting it. 

“You alright?” Wedge asks, and Luke shrugs. 

He shifts his weight off of one leg and onto the other, crossing his arms, and lets his gaze travel over his...partner?  _ Boyfriend _ seems too informal, doesn’t cover all that Wedge is to Luke, all that they are to each other;  _ lover _ is old-fashioned, and doesn’t sit right on his tongue.

( _ Husband _ , someday, for sure. Luke fully intends this, but the time isn’t right yet.)

Wedge is just Wedge, though, and perhaps that is enough. He’s ditched his flight suit for once, and he almost looks like a different person without the orange surrounding him, but then again, so must Luke. 

He remembers the shock when Wedge first saw him after he left, with the new hand, and wearing all black, and the darkness creeping around him, threatening to seep in through the cracks. Luke still dresses like that, but now it’s more out of a casual enjoyment of the style than anything else. Wedge, meanwhile, is clad in a dark turtleneck and pants, as well as a worn leather jacket. It occurs briefly to Luke that, while he has seen this jacket before—it’s a constant on the rare occasions Wedge  _ isn’t _ in his flight suit—Wedge has only started wearing it consistently in recent months. 

Since the war ended.

Since he hasn’t had to be on call around the clock.

It suits him, Luke thinks, and he smiles at this thought as Wedge, having located his flask and taken a long sip of water, gestures for Luke to come sit next to him.

“Quit the sulking and get over here, Skywalker,” he teases, cracking a grin, and despite the looming presence of the dark, despite the quest waiting just over their shoulders, Luke’s feet carry him forward and he seats himself on the rock next to Wedge.

Wedge offers Luke the water, and he takes a grateful sip. His throat is still dry, though, and it’s only now, given the chance to rest, that he reflects on how this mission has gone so far. Namely, the way his heart is racing, not due to the proximity to the man he loves for once, and how he feels taxed despite having endured much worse than this hike on Dagobah.

Luke sets down the flask, momentarily fixating on the dust that settles around it. 

“Is it just me, or are you more tired than usual?”

Wedge leans back, stretching out his spine and shoulders. “To be fair, I don’t think you slept at all last night.”

“Yes, well, my normal amount of sleep deprivation aside—”

“I wouldn’t call that  _ normal _ ,” Wedge cuts in, but he doesn’t press it any more. He and Luke both know there are any number of things that could keep either of them up, from the stress of a mission to memories of the war to the usual nightmares.

“—I just, I feel...like this planet is draining me.”

Wedge looks up, gaze trailing off into the canopy above. A passing cloud slightly dims the light in the clearing, and Luke finds himself glancing off towards the path they’ll be heading down soon, deeper and darker than before, devoid of nearly all sunlight. 

“You’d know it better than me, but now that you mention it, I feel it too. I’m tired. Not just in a no-sleep kind of way, too. I’m...drained. Sapped.”

The word  _ sapped _ evokes images of just that: sap, or coagulated blood, moving slow and thick and sickly, and that’s  _ exactly _ what Luke feels when he reaches out into the Force around him, despite knowing better than to bare himself in such a way, and finds tendrils of something more than darkness reaching back.

Luke can’t help it, then; he sighs deeply, and leans his head on Wedge’s shoulder. In this moment, he wants nothing more than to melt into the pilot’s warmth, to any warmth at all, and fall apart into every one of his individual atoms, to return to the Force, where he’ll be safe and calm and serene and harmonious and all that. This movement is not unfamiliar, but the notions driving it are, and Wedge seems to sense this. To Luke’s surprise, he doesn’t wrap an arm around Luke’s shoulders or kiss his forehead or card a hand through his hair as he usually would, but rather pushes Luke away—gently, but a push nonetheless.

Wedge holds Luke at arm’s length, hands gripping his shoulders, and looks him in the eyes. 

“Luke, this is exactly what I mean. I know you’re tired—” at this, his voice softens, and he apologetically brushes the knuckles of one hand over Luke’s collarbone “—but this is more than that. This, whatever it is, it’s affecting you.”

“That’s why you’re here,” Luke mumbles before he can think better of it, and he’s suddenly overcome with a sense of malaise and fatigue so intense and gripping, yet somehow  _ welcoming _ at the same time, that he doesn’t consciously react to the way Wedge tenses up in response. Despite the image that flashes in his head for a moment, of Leia and Wedge’s matching disapproving faces when he had complained that he didn’t need a pilot, awkwardly realizing that this made it sound like he didn’t need Wedge’s help—didn’t  _ want _ Wedge’s help—Luke does not come to the same realization this time.

Wedge could argue, he really could, and Luke is cognizant enough of the situation to know this despite not grasping what exactly the argument would be about, but he doesn’t. He just squeezes Luke’s shoulders, and shakes him a little.

“Come on, Luke. Snap out of it. It’s too early for this.”

Whether he means it’s too early in the day or too early in the mission, Luke isn’t sure. The darkness is beginning to seep in, coming closer, boxing him in more tightly than before, and everything is becoming hazy, both the physical and that within the Force. 

He opens his mouth to say something. He isn’t sure where the words will come from, but he is confident that they will be there if he wills them into existence. 

The sun hits the clearing again, brighter than before, illuminating the individual particles of dust floating around, seeming to sear the vines that lurk on the edges of the space, lighting up the rock Luke and Wedge sit on, and Luke feels golden. 

He’s not sure why that makes sense, or how something can feel like a color, but it’s there in the sun hitting his skin and Wedge’s and everything else, and warmth is spreading throughout his veins again and—

Luke’s entire body is wracked in a shudder, and when he recovers his composure he finds that all but the most inconsequential hint of haziness is gone from his system, that he is  _ aware _ again, and awake. Buzzing with the Force, bright and alive. He still wants to rest his head on Wedge’s shoulder, but this time it is because of his usual motive, simply because he craves physical contact with the man he loves, and because  _ yes _ , maybe he’s biased, but Wedge is a kriffing good cuddler.

Luke rolls his shoulders and grimaces. He stands rather abruptly, and looks down at Wedge. 

Wedge’s gaze follows his face, and then flicks down to one outstretched hand. He looks like he wants more closure, a better answer, but he says nothing, only taking Luke’s hand and letting the Jedi pull him to his feet.

“Is it time for us to walk into the dark, then?” he asks after a moment of silence, in which neither he nor Luke move to drop the other’s hand or break eye contact.

Luke is struck by the same sense of resignation that has kept coming back to him, all the way from the moment this mission was first suggested up to now, but it’s not quite as weary this time. 

He squeezes Wedge’s hand. Wedge squeezes back. 

“Yes,” he says. “Into the dark.”

-

It doesn’t take them long to find the cave after they leave the clearing, and Luke is grateful that whoever—or  _ what _ ever—created the clearing made it so close. It’s like a checkpoint of sorts, one last safe zone in which to breathe deep and not worry too much before they go past the point of no return.

They can’t turn back now, and part of Luke wanted to ask Wedge to stay behind in the clearing and wait for him, if only to be assured that whatever waits here for him won’t also affect Wedge, but he knows he can’t—and  _ shouldn’t _ —ask that of the pilot.

Still, the cave even makes Luke want to turn back. The moment he steps through its opening, framed by a few tendrils of moss that are attempting to stake out a meager living on the cold rock, he is filled with a profound sense of dread and unease. Dead leaves crunch beneath his feet, quickly fading to dust and something almost squishy in texture, and he’s glad for his lightsaber once again, as well as for his jacket. Spiderwebs hang in clumps in the darkness, brushing against Luke’s shoulders, and as he turns to glance at Wedge beside him, he sees that the pilot looks as uncomfortable as he feels. 

The moss, the cobwebs, the general sense of death and decay within the cave, he wouldn’t be concerned by these things under nearly any other circumstances. As revolting as they are, and for good reason, they are a natural part of the cycle of life and death, of the ways of the Force. 

But here, they’re accompanied by the knowledge that they don’t come from a natural source, or rather a naturally  _ not _ -malevolent source. And inside this cave, the vines are definitely sentient, first audibly and then visibly sliding and creeping along every surface.

It’s the sound that clues Luke in, the crunching as the vines snake over Force knows what (Luke certainly  _ doesn’t _ want to know what), and he senses it coming before it happens. He reacts quickly, slicing through the vines that attempt to grab him, the way his heart rate only increases a little bit a testament to how well he’s been trained. 

Wedge is not so lucky. He’s a crack shot, even with a target at a much closer range than he’s used to, and his blaster bolts tear sizzling holes in a number of vines, but they get him anyways. Luke stays on his feet, untouched by the vines—at least, at first. It’s the distraction as he throws up a hand, reaching out both physically and in the Force, fingers outstretched as he makes to rip the vines away from Wedge, that gets him. 

Wedge is the one to be surprised, though, when Luke deactivates his lightsaber and, reaching rather awkwardly around a mass of squirming vines, clips it to his belt. 

“What in the hells are you doing?” he yells, firing off a perfect shot at a vine that’s attempting to constrict Luke’s chest.

“Just trust me, okay?” Luke calls back, closing his eyes even as the vines tighten uncomfortably around his chest, and Wedge’s silence, punctuated by the occasional shot of his blaster, is all the response he needs before he starts. He waits, still, until Wedge gives him an audible confirmation, because he can never be too sure, and then he dives into the Force.

It’s colder than a lake on Hoth, and then it’s hot like blood. Luke’s attempts to wade through the darkness to find the source of the vines—or, more accurately, the source of the thing corrupting them—quickly turns to desperation, clawing and burning, and when he finds it he nearly loses his control out of a desire to end the thing as quickly as possible. It’s just one part of a larger system, one small manifestation of the evil, but while small it is still concentrated, and for a moment Luke finds it hard to distinguish between rage and righteousness as he summons everything within him. Eyes snapping open again, he jerks his arm in an arc that covers most of the vines, and...

They all stop, all at once, and in the time it takes Luke to blink once, they’re shrivelling up. This is...not what he wanted. He wanted to disable the vines, not destroy them, but he tells himself that they are simply so corrupted he couldn’t take out the darkness within the plants without taking them out too. 

This does not bode well for the future of this planet, nor for the future of this mission, but Luke doesn’t have the opportunity to dwell on these realizations. Wedge has been dropped, and so has he, both of them hitting the dirt roughly but coming away mostly unscathed, and he’s closing the distance between them to check if Wedge actually is alright.

Part of Luke just wants to feel the familiar comfort of Wedge’s heartbeat beneath his hands, but he’s forced to bite his tongue when Wedge, after just a single offhand comment about being  _ fine, let’s keep going _ , brushes off Luke’s hand on his shoulder and keeps walking deeper into the cave.

Well. 

As far as collateral goes, the vines aren’t the worst kind of loss, and Luke  _ knows _ he shouldn’t weigh things like this, knows he should be focusing on the darkness that, however momentarily, gripped him when he destroyed those vines. 

But he keeps walking anyways. And he tells himself that he’ll be fine, even as he and Wedge come closer with every step to the heart of the corruption.

It’s not vines when they reach the deepest point in the caves, no. Not even an animal, a beast, a sapient being—never mind that when the dark side has a hand in things, the line between those is blurred.

“Do you see anything?” Wedge asks, and all Luke can answer with is a shaky exhalation as his lightsaber, gripped tightly in one white-knuckled hand, ignites. He sees many things, amongst them the source of the evil here, buried deep in the planet’s core. This is not something he can deal with on his own, not now, not like this, probably not ever. This is something huge and ancient, more powerful than he, and it is not his place to face down such things. He can not burn this house down; all he can do is wander deep into its bowels and draw aside a heavy old curtain for a moment to recover what he came for. 

The artifact: that’s here too, here in this cave with him; he can’t see it yet, but he can feel its presence nonetheless. It had a name, once, and then so did this planet, long ago. Primordial things, on the edge of comprehension.

Luke realizes that his eyes have been closed, and after he opens them, that Wedge is still waiting for a response. Still trusting him.

“It’s here,” Luke says, one deep breath later.

Wedge is checking the cartridge in his blaster pistol again, body language tense and defensive, readying himself for a fight of life-and-death stakes. Luke is struck by a feeling like a shiver, quickly passing yet profound, some realization that, even though the war may be over now, he and Wedge—and really,  _ everyone _ in the Galaxy—may never be done making the hard choices, never be done having regrets, never be done looking over their shoulders and reloading their weapons.

“What next?” Wedge asks, and Luke realizes that in these few moments of silent reflection, the two of them have instinctively shifted so that they stand back to back. They barely touch, only a brush of shoulders here and there, dancing around each other in a routine they know all too well by now—this is far from their first mission together, official or out of necessity.

Luke is opening his mouth to reply, but the words die on his tongue. He feels the darkness more physically, more aggressively,  _ more _ than before now, running through his blood and threatening to slice open his veins, to first contaminate him and then everything else around him. It’s coming for him, rising from the core of the planet, and the artifact is buried deep within it. 

He hopes, briefly, that he can draw aside that curtain and take the artifact, destroying the darkness coming after him, without taking out the entire thing, because he’s fairly sure the roots of the corruption cannot be touched without also getting to the planet itself.

Luke closes his eyes. The deep breaths come naturally after years of practice, but he still has to focus hard to make them stay steady. In, out. Inhale, exhale. In through the nose and out through the mouth.

He opens his eyes and almost trips and falls at the shock of what he sees. It’s only his training and preparedness that keeps him from being taken completely off guard, because the thing facing him is  _ monstrous _ . That’s the only way he can think to describe it, and he’s not sure how much of it is the fact that he’s at a loss for words anyways and how much is the terror this thing generates. 

It must be a hallucination, induced by the power that the dark side of the Force holds over this planet, but then again, it might also be a flesh-and-blood creature, something tangible and far too real for comfort.

Even if it  _ is _ just a product of the Force, Luke thinks...the line between what that is and what a so-called  _ real _ thing is? That’s a blurry line, especially in a place as raw and powerful and ancient as this.

The thing, whatever it is, defies description. If Luke focuses, he can make out the aura of the artifact, glowing softly in a neutral tone, buried deep within the dark construct, but everything else in his field of vision is dark, dark,  _ dark _ .

He blinks.

There’s a light when he looks down, however small. It’s him. He turns. There’s Wedge, glowing brightly too. On a physical level, Luke’s lightsaber glows, a neon green that somehow manages to feel more natural than the green of those vines from earlier.

He blinks again. 

He can’t see Wedge, can’t see anything of the cave. There is only darkness, this monstrous thing bearing down over him, around him, and it  _ is _ him for the span of a single intake of breath, and then it is everything  _ but _ him for the time it takes Luke to let out that breath.

Disgust, anger, spite, all those horrible—no,  _ human _ —emotions overtake him, and it is a testament to Luke’s humanity that he acknowledges they are his before he lets them go, gathering them up and pushing them away from him with as much gentleness as he can muster. This strange hallucinatory version of him still has the lightsaber, an odd glowing construct that has no defined shape or volume if he tries to look directly at it, a bright beacon of hope out of the corner of his eye.

The beast has no defined shape or volume, either, but it is becoming less and less vague the longer Luke stands here, and he’s just beginning to wonder when it will attack when it does just that, surging at him in a strange, inarticulable way. He can’t define where the darkness ends and he begins, or where the darkness ends at all. It’s just  _ there _ , all of a sudden, and he knows nothing to do except to throw up his lightsaber, to block it with all his might.

Sparks fly. An unearthly roar shakes the ground beneath Luke’s feet—he only now notices that there  _ is _ ground beneath his feet—and leaves his ears ringing, and he swears he hears the echo of blaster fire for a split second. In this fleeting breath, he wonders how time is passing in the real world, if this is a hallucination, if the whole  _ mission _ was a hallucination, if—

_ Wedge _ . 

—if Wedge is okay.

The real world comes back into focus, now, not entirely, but just enough for Luke to make things out. The darkness is at the edges of his vision no matter which way he turns, a monstrous vignette, and he thinks it might be consuming the cave. Might be consuming  _ him. _

A blaster fires again, red streaking even behind Luke’s eyelids, burning white trails like comets into his vision, and it’s like he was underwater and has now been dragged abruptly back to the surface. 

Wedge. Wedge is there. Firing his blaster into the great incomprehensible dark. Alive. Yelling in desperation. It’s ironic; he isn’t vulnerable to the darkness in the same way Luke is, not being anywhere near as tied together with the Force, but his weapons can’t touch the beast.

Luke swings his lightsaber, and it leaves his hand, slicing through tendrils and then vaporous streams of void, some monstrous scream echoing in his ears, and he thinks he might wake up tomorrow morning to wonder if all this was one great hallucination. Some things are all but beyond comprehension, and this is for a reason.

The lightsaber returns to his hand, and he readies himself for his next strike, something cold and sickly making itself more and more at home in his veins with every passing second. He pushes it away, but it comes back. 

Luke wonders, bile and resignation rising in his throat, if he will have to harness the dark side to get out of here alive. He recalls what Wedge said, what he  _ knows _ , what the Jedi Council of his father’s time were wrong to deny—not all things dark are evil. 

But this? This is not just dark. This is evil, and Luke does not want to give into it.

All thoughts of consequence leave his mind as he turns to see Wedge cry out in pain, drop his blaster; stumble, doubled-over, holding his side in one bloodstained hand, towards the nearest wall.

Only to fall to the ground, into the dust.

The beast looms over him.

The darkness is creeping into Luke, too, and he isn’t sure whether the righteous, passionate sense that overcomes him—something sublime, something  _ profound _ that goes beyond words—is good or evil.

He isn’t sure that it matters, because all he is aware of just a tick later is that he is raging, he is just, he is  _ righteous _ , and he is lashing out with all his might at the beast before him.

“Don’t kriffing  _ touch _ him!” Luke hears himself yell, lunging in front of Wedge, but it’s as if he’s watching someone else pilot his own body.

And, in one horrifying moment, he  _ understands _ . He understands  _ exactly _ what it was that made his father, and so many before Anakin, fall to the dark side. Because when he knew he was good fighting evil, when there were easily defined sides and he had other reasons not to trust the dark side than the simple fact that it is what it is, it was easy to avoid it.

But now, when things aren’t so black-and-white, when Luke has had the time and space to learn that dark and evil are not synonymous and, similarly, light and good aren’t either, it’s harder to tell.

But you can’t fight fire with fire, because it takes only a moment before all the darkness is sapped out of Luke’s body, and with it most of his energy. He’s reeling, falling, stumbling, and Wedge is still on the ground, shaking, eyes wide and terrified, but as Luke turns, gasping, searching, he realizes that Wedge isn’t scared of the beast.

He’s scared of  _ Luke _ .

Wedge’s face twists, from fear to disgust to resignation and, for a split second, something soft and pleading. 

And then it’s fear again, and he’s opening his mouth, and Luke wants to stop him but he’ll let him talk, it’s the right thing to do, but neither of them get the chance.

The beast has risen again, and this time it carries Luke’s darkness with him. In this way, it is tethered to him, and both of them can sense it. Hells, Wedge can probably sense it too, in that strange way of his, but using the dark side, apart from not working in the slightest, has left Luke drained.

Ardor blooms in his chest again, but this time it’s bright, mist on fresh grass, rocky cliffs overhanging a crashing ocean, a golden sun at dusk, gently glowing moons, an outstretched hand, gleaming brown eyes. It’s not passion fueled by hate, but by love, by adoration for something greater than himself, greater even than what he and Wedge have, greater than any planet or any star system, something which encompasses the entire Galaxy and then some.

Luke’s lightsaber is an extension of his body, blade guiding his hand as much as vice versa, and a single swing cuts through the beast and—

It explodes, a billowing mass of soot and ash, of quickly evaporating dust, something not dark or light but sickly, fetid, festering,  _ rotting _ .

This time, Luke is the one to fall. This time, Wedge is the one on his feet, cradling Luke’s frail all-too-human body in his arms, but Luke will be alright. He’s drained, but he knows it’s nothing a little rest and meditation can’t fix, and that’s not to say time with the man he loves can’t speed that process up a little as well.

“Kriff, kriff, Luke, you  _ idiot _ ,” Wedge is saying, and something hot and wet is trickling down Luke’s chin, and it tastes of copper when he licks dry lips, smudging his teeth as he grins up at Wedge, but— _ oh _ . It’s blood. He’s bleeding. 

“I’m fine,” Luke croaks despite himself, and he furrows his brows, the only movement he can really make without exerting himself right now, as he spots Wedge scuffling around in the dust for something. 

“Oh, you found the artifact,” he mumbles, thoughts tumbling around in a way that is decidedly not coherent, and Wedge sighs deeply. The artifact disappears into Wedge’s pack before he can get a good look at it, but he trusts Wedge. 

“You’re not fine, Luke,” Wedge is saying, and  _ wow, time just sort of skipped ahead there, didn’t it? _ Luke wonders to himself.

“I will be, it’s not that much physical damage, I’m just drained in the Force and I need to—” Wedge is gently pushing him down onto his back again as Luke attempts, skull pounding to sit up “—I need to meditate.”

Wedge’s hands are on his shoulders, almost shaking him.

“Luke  _ kriffing  _ Skywalker.  _ Kriff  _ you and  _ kriff _ your  _ kriffing _ hero complex.”

Luke feels his grin widen.

“Has anyone ever told you you’re kinda cute when you’re angry?” he says, and of course his connection to the Force decides to take the first noticeable steps in repairing itself at exactly  _ that _ moment, and he’s suddenly aware enough to realize how fucking  _ insensitive _ that sounds.

He bites his tongue. Swallows, hard. His face must be pale now, and not just from the blood loss.

“Kriff,” he says. “I’m sorry. And what I said about not needing a pilot, that must have come off as so kriffing insensitive, I can’t believe I didn’t apologize earlier, I just didn’t want you to be the one to get hurt and  _ especially  _ not because of me and—”

Another wave of nausea, of fatigue, hits him, and he loses his train of thought.

Wedge caresses his cheek, gently wiping blood off one jawbone. 

“Idiot,” he says, but more softly this time. “I know you didn’t mean it. I’m not mad about that. I’m not mad at all, I’m kriffing  _ scared _ .”

Luke tastes copper, bile, and something else. It might be his life flashing before his eyes.

“Scared?”

They both know the answer, even if the question is partially unspoken.

“For you.” Wedge stops. Looks down. Looks away, anywhere but Luke. Meets Luke’s eyes again, with a sense of finality. It’s written in his face that he hates—if Wedge can ever really  _ hate _ anything—what he’s about to say, but he says it nonetheless. 

“ _ Of _ you.”

Kriff. He’s crying. A tear is sliding down his cheek, and it hits Luke’s face, but neither of them move to wipe it away.

“I don’t want to be scared of you, Luke,” he says through choked sobs, and Luke is so, so glad his strength is beginning to return to him now, because in this moment he wants—he  _ needs _ —nothing more than to lurch forward, however awkwardly, and pull Wedge into a hug.

“I—I don’t want that either,” Luke says, eyes damp. Wedge is shuddering in his arms, and he wants the pain—Wedge’s, his own, that of this planet—to stop. He wants to wake up back on base, on any of the planets they’ve visited (even Dathomir might be better than this), and find that it was all just a horrible nightmare.

Wedge is pulling back, pulling himself together, looking into Luke’s eyes, now.

“Please,” he says, “ _ please _ never fall into the dark side, or whatever in all nine hells that was, like that again. It was evil, and it was horrible, and it was  _ you _ for a moment. It scared me, more than the thought of you dying, I—I thought I’d lost you.”

“Kriff, no, I—” Luke’s voice quiets. “I don’t want to make promises I can’t keep.”

Wedge’s hands tighten on his shoulders.

“But I—what you said. Not all things dark are evil. There’s a healthy amount of balance, of  _ darkness _ , and that wasn’t it. I may walk a line, and who knows where that’ll go, but I promise I’ll always have light in me, and...I  _ swear _ to you I’ll never fall into...that.”

“Eloquent,” Wedge says after a moment.

“Hey, if you wanted to be around someone good with words, you should have stayed behind with Leia.”

Wedge’s entire body shakes in a laugh, and it is in this moment that Luke realizes he’s stopped sobbing, the crying resigned to the occasional shudder and sniffle.

“Nah,” he says, settling into Luke’s embrace a little more comfortably, “messy as it can be, I prefer a little adventure.”

Now that the fear has faded, Luke thinks that perhaps they might be alright after all. Although, once they’re back on the ship, a little rest first couldn’t hurt.


End file.
